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Work Stress: Psychological response to an excessive stimulation in…

- - - - Task demands:
        
        Workload, pace of work, work hours
        
        Underutilisation of abilities can also be a source of stress
      - Task ambiguity: Unclear job instructions
      - Work conditions: Poor physical conditions and insufficient resources
      - Organisational policies
    - - Lack of control: A perception of the work situation (way of doing work and time to finish work
      - People issues: Difficult colleagues, disputes
      - Role stressors:
        
        Role ambiguity (unclear expectations from the role)
        
        Role conflict (incompatible demands from different roles)
      - Work-family conflict: Conflict between work and family role
      - Emotional labour: Effort put in managing emotions displayed in daily work
        
        More salient for jobs that require large amount of interactions with customers
        
        Surface vs deep acting: Faking emotions vs changing the emotions felt in a cognitive sense (really putting on a role)
        
        Deep acting related to better health outcome: More training on emotional regulation!
    - - Type A behaviour pattern: Coronary-prone personality (expression of anger and hostility under stress), high achievement striving and impatience, feeling of time urgency (more affected by stress)
      - Hardiness: Feeling in control and viewing stressful events as challenges, more resistant to stress
      - Locus of control: Internal LOC people experience lower stress
      - Self-esteem: More effective coping for high self-esteem
    - - Revised Social Readjustment Rating Scale: Ranks different stressors of a person's life by both stress value and frequency of the occurrence of stress event
        
        Stress value:
        No. 1. Death of spouse
        No. 3. Major injury/illness to the self
        
        Frequency of occurrence:
        No. 1. Changing work responsibility
        No. 5. Changing employers/careers
        
        Overall significance (stress + frequency)
        No. 5. Being fired/laid off/unemployed
        No. 8. Employer reorganisation/downsizing
  - - - Alarm: Resistance to stress drops briefly upon reaction to stress, and then increases
        
        Resistance: Resistance remains at a high level to deal with stress (individual fully prepared to cope with the stress)
        
        Exhaustion: A collapse reaction; resistance drops drastically
  - - - Social cognitive approach: Emphasising how a person interprets and construes a situation and the environment
      - Two levels of appraisal
        
        Primary appraisal: Meanings given to the situation
        
        There is no stress if the perceived threatening situation is coupled with sufficient coping resources
        Interventions could include training of coping strategies
        
        Secondary appraisal: Evaluates the significance of the situation and coping resources (how to manage and resolve the stress); deeper level of appraisal
      - Types
        
        Problem-focused coping/rational coping: Tackling the problem directly; more associated with positive consequences
        
        Can increase distress
        
        Emotion-focused coping: Relieving negative emotions (e.g. by excessive eating, alcohol, drugs, retail therapy)
        
        Usually associated with distress (negative effects)
        
        There are some benefits (e.g. emotional distancing)
        
        Meaning-focused coping: Managing the meanings given to the situation (modifying the meaning of the situation from values and beliefs, putting positive meanings to stressful events)
        
        Coping effectiveness
        
        Effectiveness of the type of coping depends on the time of the event
        
        Before the major stressor event: Problem-focused coping
        After the major stressor (you can't do anything else): Distancing/emotional coping
        
        Coping flexibility: Ability to adjust coping strategies in different stressful situations
        
        Measurement:
        
        Recording individual usage of various coping strategies
        
        Number of coping options selected for different scenarios
        
        Flexibility in appraisals of event controllability and subsequent coping strategies favoured
        
        Associated with well-being
    - - Relationship depends on 2 factors
        
        Demands from the job; psychological demands (effort exertion)
        
        Increases stress
        
        Control possessed by the worker over decisions on the job
        
        Mitigates the adverse effect of stress
        
        Factors influencing demand-control relationship
        
        Control is based on perception: High perceived control can counter the negative events of high demands on health outcomes (perception is a moderator)
        
        Self-efficacy: High job control adds stress for workers with low self-efficacy, but buffers stress for those in high-efficacy
        
        Locus of control: External LOC workers would experience more stress for workers with high demand and high control jobs and less stress for low control jobs
      - Emphasis on person-environment interactions
    - - Interactive approach: Stress is from the fit, rather than the demands of the job and considers external influences
      - Objective fit: Environment is an objective feature
      - Subjective fit: Perception of the environment; more proximal in predicting stress
      - 2 primary forms of fit
        
        Supplementary fit: Similarity-based fit
        Person-organisation fit: How well do you fit in the organisation (values of the organisation)
        
        Similar effects on outcomes (e.g. job attitudes, intention to quit, performance, etc.)
        
        Complementary fit: Needs-supplies fit (the person fulfils the needs of the environment and vice versa)
        Person-job fit: How well do your skills match the requirement of your job
- - - - Workload: High job demands without proper skills --> display emotions inconsistent with their true feelings
      - Control: Responsibilities exceed own authority
      - Reward: Insufficient pay or recognition for the job
      - Community: Job demands go against people's needs for social connection
      - Fairness: Inequity of workload or pay, unfairness in promotion
- - - - Stress inoculation:
        
        Learn about how individual has responded to stressful events in the past
        
        Learning and rehearsing coping skills
        
        Application
      - Progressive muscle relaxation: Tightening one set of muscles for a few seconds, and then letting those muscles relax to reduce arousal and anxiety
      - Biofeedback: Teaching individuals to control certain body functions by responding to feedback from an electronic instrument
    - - Instrumental support: Direct help (e.g. encouragement from colleagues)
        
        Emotional support
        
        Informational support (e.g. information to help solve a problem)
        
        Appraisal support: Feedback about person's functioning that enhances their self-esteem
      - Buffer or moderator hypothesis: The negative effects of work stressors can be buffered or moderated by social support